Georgia
Since 1991 but especially since the December 2003 "Rose Revolution" the United States has transformed Georgia on the Black Sea's eastern border into a private military preserve, first dispatching Green Berets, then Marines to train, equip and transform the nation's armed forces for wars abroad and at home.
The revamped Georgian army was first tried out in Iraq, where with a 2,000-troop contingent it had the third largest foreign force in Iraq until last August when the US military, whose creation it was, flew the soldiers home for the war with Russia.
Before the echoes of last August's gunfire and artillery rounds had died down the US sent its warship the USS McFaul to the Georgian port city of Batumi and the flagship of its Sixth Fleet, the USS Mount Whitney, to Poti whose mission was announced to the chronically credulous as delivering "juice, powdered milk and hygiene products."
Batumi is the capital of Ajaria, a former autonomous region subjugated by the then newborn 'Rose' regime in April of 2004 after its US-trained army staged Georgia's largest-ever military exercises in nearby Poti and threatened invasion, lies just south of the Abkhazian capital of Sukhumi, where Russian ships were then stationed. Warships of the world's two major nuclear powers faced off against each other off the Black Sea coast just 75 kilometers apart.
At the same time NATO deployed a naval strike group to the Black Sea consisting of three US warships, a Polish frigate, a German frigate and a Spanish guided missile frigate as well as four Turkish vessels with eight more warships planning to join the flotilla.
The NATO warships were only 150 kilometers from Russian counterparts then docked in Abkhazia.
Ukraine
On the north end of the Black Sea the US has led annual Sea Breeze NATO exercises in Ukraine's Crimea, evoking mass outrage and spirited protests from the Crimeans themselves whose parliament three days ago voted against a proposed US representative office being set up, one which no doubt would oversee both the suppression of increased autonomy demands and anti-NATO actions in Crimea and prepare the groundwork for the eviction of Russia's Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol.
Regarding the second point, a Russian news site offered these insights:
"Analysts speak about Ukrainian plans to kick out Russia and turn over the Crimean bases to NATO and the United States, as both salivate for a military presence in the Black Sea Basin."
(Voice of Russia, May 28, 2008)
"One of the conditions for NATO membership is absence of foreign bases on the country's territory....[Ukraine's 'orange' authorities] do what they can to drive away the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea. In such a way Kiev signals to Brussels that it is preparing a base for NATO naval ships in the Black Sea."
(Voice of Russia, May 22, 2008
Georgia's and Ukraine's next, complete, phase of integration as Pentagon's military outposts was announced last December and January, respectively, when Washington signed Strategic Partnership Charters with first Kiev and then Tbilisi. Months before that and only days after Georgia launched its attack on South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers there, triggering last August's war, all 26 NATO members sent representatives as part of a delegation to the Georgian capital to establish a new NATO-Georgia Commission.
At the same time the regime of Ukraine's Viktor Yushschenko, who rode to power on the US-financed and -directed 'orange revolution' of December 2004, and whose wife Kathy is a Chicago-born and -raised former official in the Reagan State Department and the George H. W. Bush Treasury Department and was once described by a fawning admirer as "a Reaganite's Reaganite," used the deployment of Russian ships to the Black Sea during the war with Georgia to apply pressure on the Black Sea Fleet, at one point implying the ships might not be permitted to return to Sevastopol.
Several weeks after the Caucasus war ended, Washington sent an intelligence gathering ship, U.S. Pathfinder, to Sevastopol harbor.
The Yushchenko junta renewed its accusations against the Russian fleet late last month on another score, slightly over a month after the Charter on Strategic Cooperation was signed with Washington.
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